	GNU Emacs availability information, July 3, 1985
	     Copyright (C) 1985 Richard M. Stallman

   Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute
   verbatim copies of this document provided that the
   copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved.

GNU Emacs is legally owned by me, Richard Stallman, its author,
but I regard myself actually as its custodian on behalf of the
public, since all software ought to be the common property of
mankind.

I permit everyone to have and run copies of GNU Emacs, at no
charge, and to redistribute copies under certain conditions
which are designed to make sure that that all modified versions
of GNU Emacs remain as free as the versions I distribute.
These conditions are stated in the document "GNU Emacs copying
permission notice", a copy of which is required to be
distributed with every copy of GNU Emacs.  It is usually in a
file named COPYING in the same directory as this file.

I also ship copies of GNU Emacs, and provide some services,
to people who pay for this.
I will send you a tape of the latest version of GNU Emacs,
including full sources, if you send $150 to
  Richard M. Stallman
  c/o Lisp Machine Incorporated
  1000 Mass Ave
  Cambridge, MA 02139.
(This price is subject to change without notice.)
Make checks out to Richard Stallman.  LMI provides me with an address,
but GNU Emacs is not an LMI product.

If you are on the Internet, you can at present copy the latest
distribution version from the file /u2/emacs/edist.tar on host
MIT-PREP.  After you unpack it, be sure to look at the files README
and INSTALL.  The files are also present individually under the
directory /u2/emacs/dist.

Files of differences from previous widely distributed versions to
the present version are also available on MIT-PREP under names
of the form diff-OO.OO-NN.NN.  These are made with diff -c.

A special version of rcp exists which allows you, on an Internet host,
to copy all files whose last-mod-dates don't match your files.
See the file RCP in this directory for information on using it.

Currently GNU Emacs has only been tested on Berkeley 4.2/4.3 on Vaxes,
68000's, 16000's and Pyramids.  Version 15 worked on a 16000 system,
but version 16 has not yet been tested on one.  GNU Emacs is far too
large ever to run on a PDP-11.  Version 16 is within inches of running
on one particular version of System V, but missing many features.  You
should not expect to be able to use it on System V yet without doing
some programming.  Perhaps in a month or two the remaining work will
be done.  A VMS port is also under way.

The GNU Emacs manual source file should be on Emacs distributions by
July 15, 1985.  Printed copies should be available for mail order by
the end of July, but the cost has not yet been determined.  Tapes sent
before then will be followed by manuals as soon as they are ready.

GNU Emacs is distributed on an as-is basis; no guarantee is made that
it will not break down or that it is suitable for any particular
purpose.  I do not promise any users that I will make any particular
change.  However, I plan to continue to improve GNU Emacs and keep it
reliable, so please send me any complaints and suggestions you have.
I will probably fix anything that is clearly (to me) a malfunction,
and install any easily made improvement if I agree it is desirable.
More difficult improvements I may or may not make, depending on my
evaluation of their importance and difficulty; also I may be willing
to accept a contract to make a specific improvement.  Other people may
also be willing to do this for you.

If you are on the Internet, report bugs to bug-gnu-emacs@mit-prep.
On Usenet, use the address ...!ucbvax!bug-gnu-emacs%mit-prep.

If you have paid for a tape, I will also notify you by mail
when a new version is available and give you a reasonable
amount of assistance in getting GNU Emacs to work for the
first time, as long as you use it on a system it is supposed
to work on.  Note that there is significant variation between Unix
systems supposedly running the same version of Unix; it is
possible that what works in GNU Emacs for me does not work
on your system due to such an incompatibility.  Since I must
avoid reading Unix source code, I cannot even guess what such
problems may exist.

If you are a computer manufacturer, I encourage you to ship
a copy of GNU Emacs with every computer you deliver.  The
same copying permission terms apply to computer manufacturers
as to everyone else.

If you like GNU Emacs, please express your satisfaction with
a donation: send me what you feel would be a fair price
for GNU Emacs, if you were buying it.  If you are glad that I
developed GNU Emacs and distribute it as freeware, rather
than following the obstructive and antisocial practices
typical of software developers, reward me for doing so!

Your donations will help to support a career dedicated to
developing useful software such as GNU Emacs, and distributing
it all on the same free basis.  In particular, I am working on
a complete imitation of the Unix operating system, called GNU
(Gnu's Not Unix), which will run Unix user programs.  For more
information on GNU, see the file GNU in this directory.


			Richard M Stallman
			Chief GNUisance,
			 inventor of the first (PDP-10) Emacs.
